meh, even if you're bottom of the class, there are probably places that will hire you as a full-time associate, if only to put your school name on their promotional material. it'll probably be a small firm paying less than market, but it won't quite be temp work.

There's always a few that finish and still can't pass the bar and can't find work.

Stephen Vasil, a Yale Law School graduate, and Andrew Gilman, a New York University law grad, were hired through a temp agency to work on the Xerox case. Vasil says they often performed glorified secretarial work, including reviewing electronic documents to identify their author and destination. Vasil was paid $35 an hour, Gilman, $40. Yet the law firms in the case are asking for roughly $500 an hour for their services.

"We joked we could hire a bunch of 10-year-olds to do it for us," says Vasil, 34.